Researching Data Science Education: Perspectives on Qualitative Research Methods

Dr. Allison Theobold

Today’s Layout


  1. Some background on qualitative research
  1. Qualitative investigations into student’s code
  1. Qualitative investigations into group work
  1. Implications for oral assessments

http://bit.ly/qual-research-duke

A bit about me…

Ph.D. in Statistics from Montana State University

“Supporting Data-Intensive Environmental Science Research: Data Science Skills for Scientific Practitioners of Statistics”

Qualitative Research

“Qualitative researchers strive to understand the meaning people have constructed about their world and their experiences.” (Merriam 2002)



“Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there. This understanding is an end in itself.” (Patton 1990)

What are the principles of qualitative research?


  • The researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and data analysis

  • The analysis seeks to find emerging themes

  • The product of a qualitative study is richly descriptive

How might this look?


Sample Selection

Select a sample from which the most can be learned!

Data Collection

Major sources of data – interviews, observations, documents

Data Analysis

Compares units of data to find common patterns across the data

Investigating Student Learning through Code

Warm-up (90 seconds)


RPMA2GrowthSub$Weight[RPMA2GrowthSub$Age == 1]


How would you describe the action(s) being taken in this statement?

A framework for analyzing student’s code

Text Surface Program Execution Function
Macrostructure Understanding the overall structure of the program Understanding the “algorithm” of the program Understanding the goal / purpose of the program (in its context)
Relations References between blocks, e.g., method calls, object creation Sequence of method calls, object sequence diagrams Understanding how sub-goals are related to goals, how function is achieved by subfunctions
Blocks Regions of interest (ROI) that syntactically or semantically build a unit Operation of a block, a method, or a ROI (as a sequence of statements) Function of a block, may be seen as a sub-goal
Atoms Language elements Operation of a statement Function of a statement, only understandable in context

Coding student’s code


RPMA2GrowthSub$Weight[RPMA2GrowthSub$Age == 1]


Descriptive Code

“Filters a vector of values using extraction operator, based on an equality relation with a variable selected from dataframe using $ operator”

In-vivo Code

“Uses [ ] and == to filter vector, uses $ to select variable”

How could this be used?

Why is this important for data science education?

How can we distinguish merely interesting learning from effective learning (Wiggins and McTighe 2005)?

Investigating Power in the Classroom

Another Warm-up 🙃


Choose one word that summarizes how you felt the last time you collaborated in a group.

“The more one talks and the less one listens, the more likely it is that one’s viewpoint will function as if it were community consensus even if it is not” (Montell 2019).

Example Student Conversation

Discorse Analysis

  • Gee perspective

  • Influence framework perspective

How Methods can be used

What can group work teach us about oral exams?(Theobold 2021)

Questions?

References

Merriam, Sharan B. 2002. Qualitative Research in Practice: Examples for Discussion and Analysis. 1st ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Montell, A. 2019. Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Patton, Mary Q. 1990. Qualitative Evaualuation Methods. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Theobold, Allison S. 2021. “Oral Exams: A More Meaningful Assessment of Students’ Understanding.” Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education 29 (2): 156–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2021.1914527.
Theobold, Allison S., and Derek A. Williams. 2022. “’I Watched as He Put Things on the Paper’: A Feminist View of Mathematical Discourse.” In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 519–28. PME-NA/Middle Tennessee State University. https://doi.org/10.51272/pmena.44.2022.
Wiggins, G., and J. McTighe. 2005. Understanding by Design. 2nd ed. Alexandria: Association for Supervision; Curriculum Development (ASCD).